Kellogg's bid for crackle

February 7 2003By Kirsty Needham

A bid by Kellogg's to control the recipe for chocolate crackles has raised the potential for the community cake stall to be found in breach of the law.

The United States cereal giant claims on its Website to have
developed the popular Australian children's recipe over 50
years ago, and is now seeking a registered trademark.
The move has been described as a "cultural travesty" by
one lawyer, while tuckshop mums have warned they may
boycott the company.

"I wonder what is next? Fairy bread?" said Macek Rubetzki,
a lawyer with Dibbs, Barker and Gosling.

"When I was a kid in the 1950s, when you had a fete the
chocolate crackle was always the most popular item, but it
was never sold under the Kellogg's brand."

Chief judge of the junior cooking category for the Albury
Show, Dorothy Heiner, said chocolate crackles continue to
appear en- masse because they are found in most children's
cooking and party books.
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But Mrs Heiner said there are now endless variations on
the classic recipe: "They add fruits to it, or mini
mashmallows, or put sprinkles on top. Sometimes they are
put into ice cream cones."

Kellogg's may be seeking a trademark because alternatives
to Rice Bubbles are also being used, she said.
Any cake stall carrying a chocolate crackle sign above a
plate would be in breach of the new trademark, as would
community recipe books, claimed Mr Rubetzki.

"It is very surprising and it will put people offside," said
Irene Pavlidis, who has three children and organises cake
stalls for Newington College.

The government patent office, IP Australia, said a
trademark was first granted to Kellogg's for chocolate
crackles as a breakfast cereal term in 1953. But the new
application for the recipe, covering all printed material,
would need to be carefully investigated, said John Bray
brooks, the deputy registrar for trademarks. The office must
consider the widespread use of chocolate crackles since 1953.

Any decision would need to consider the "normal under
standing of the word in the community", and whether
anyone else would need to use the recipe to carry on their
business.

Lecturer in gastronomy at the University of Adelaide,
Barbara Santich, said: "I would have thought that 50 years or
more of naturalization denies Kellogg's the right to appropriate a recipe now."

Recipes, once freely exchanged and adapted in popular
womens magazines, were increasingly coming under copy
right pressure, she said.

However Ms Santich said she thought this recipe was more
synonymous with its other major ingedient, copha.

Unilever said copha was a niche product whose packet is
printed with a chocolate crackle recipe and whose sales are
dependent it. The company is examining the implications of
the Kellogg's application.